Waste Not Want Not: Uses for Old T-Shirts

My husband has a thing for t-shirts. Just like my beloved scrapbooks, he looks past the armpit holes, faded colors, and crackling insignias and instead sees each shirt’s intense sentimental value (white undershirts aside, though he does not like to part with these either!). He’s practically a t-shirt hoarder. This has led me to wonder, what can I do with all of his old t-shirts (the ones I can talk him into parting with)? This is besides the common continuum of clothing use that goes something like this: wearing it out, passing it down, and repurposing as renovation/workout clothes/pajamas.

Here are some of the ideas I found:

Cleaning Rags: Depending on the job, rip up the shirts into various sizes to use as cleaning rags throughout the house and garage.

Pet Toy: Tear the t-shirt into strips and then braid several strips together to make a great tug-of-war toy for a cat or a dog. If you braid it tightly enough it should come out like the sturdy ones you see for dogs at the pet store!

Wall Art: You can frame old t-shirts with neat messages and logos to use as art in dens, closets, dorm rooms, cubicles/offices, or really anywhere.

Stylish Rug: You can rip t-shirts up, dye them or separate by a color pattern, and make a flokati rug. Here is a tutorial.

Bedding for a Pet Cage: Tear shirts into strips and line the bottom of your pet’s cage/bed for extra comfort and warmth.

T-Shirt Quilt: I have decided that since Paul attaches great sentimental value to his shirts, we should save a bunch of them (once they are past the wearing stage) and make a quilt. How neat! This would be a cute gift for someone going off to college or moving into their first apartment/home.

Scrapbook Background Pages/Scrapbook Covers: It would be cute to either cut the message from a t-shirt to use as part of a scrapbook page or to cut the shirt into a big square and bind it with a white page to use as background to photographs. Why not wrap the outer cover with an old sporting event/college/funny t-shirt that holds a lot of sentimental value to you? Also think about keeping a favorite onesie or t-shirt from your child that you do not wish to part with and enhance your child’s scrapbook.

Before researching this article, I had no idea of all of the creative ways people have come up with to repurpose old t-shirts. My favorites are the flokati rug and the t-shirt quilt! In our household, we typically repurpose old t-shirts for renovation/painting projects/pajamas, or donate when they are still wearable for normal purposes. But now I see that even the ones that are stained and muddied up by projects can still be torn into strips and used for something else.